


complete disarray

by Shializaro



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: AU of an AU of an AU, Accidental Prisoner Acquisition, Gen, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe, Time Travel, Warring Clan Era, attempted self-sacrifice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2020-06-28 16:24:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19816039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shializaro/pseuds/Shializaro
Summary: In which Madara is a little too late, Tobirama is a little too early and, as usual, nothing ever goes as planned for Shikako and Sasuke, accidental time travelers and trouble magnets extraordinaire.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Complications](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/498817) by donahermurphy. 
  * Inspired by [In a Definite Place at a Definite Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18426930) by [Pepperdoken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pepperdoken/pseuds/Pepperdoken), [VagabondDawn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VagabondDawn/pseuds/VagabondDawn), [wafflelate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wafflelate/pseuds/wafflelate). 



> This fic uses the premise of Complications by donahermurphy, which is an AU of In a Definite Place at a Definite Time by Pepperdoken, VagabondDawn and wafflelate.  
> However, the world-building, headcanons etc. might differ in places.  
> Thanks to math-is-magic for betaing!

A powerful chakra source is making their way towards their provisional camp. They’re fast. They’re very well hidden - if Shikako hadn’t been somewhat paranoid after losing so much chakra healing Izuna she would have missed them. They’re… _familiar._ She can’t quite place the signature, something that hovered at the edges of her range at some point, but it feels distinctly like water, the roiling waves of an ocean during a storm, so she can extrapolate. 

_Senju Tobirama._

_They are so fucked._

She assesses the situation: Sasuke, still tying traps to trees with little Kagutsuchi. Izuna, shifting in a way that means he’s rapidly becoming conscious. They had taken responsibility for these people. There was a child here. An Uchiha child. And _Uchiha Izuna._ Making Sasuke leave his clanmates behind was definitely not an option. 

Not that she would; she might have come a way from _Thou Shalt Not Kill,_ courtesy of Konoha’s very effective desensitisation program but killing 10-year-olds, even through non-interference, is still a big no-no if she can at all avoid it. Of course, whether she _can_ avoid it is still up in the air. With her in this condition — so stupid, exhausting herself in unknown territory _again_ — and Sasuke distracted by having to protect a kid, they’d never stand a chance against the second Hokage. Who was also one of the fastest shinobi who ever lived, so flight was probably out, too. Her nose wrinkled in distaste as her options were quickly whittled down.

She’ll have to attempt the Kakashi Maneuver. 

One more thing Sasuke will never forgive her for when he finds out, she supposes. 

“Incoming!” She shouts, surging to her feet. Then, more calmly “Sasuke, grab the kid and Izuna and get them to safety, I’ll hold them off.”

Yeah, hold him off. Distract him, maybe get shish-kebabed by a lightsaber. 

Sasuke looks at her suspiciously — her heart twinges, this wasn’t really fair to him at all — but he does as he’s told, scooping up Kagutsuchi and clamping a weakly groaning Izuna under his arm. 

“Meet up back at the primary location,” he says, rushed, and Shikako gives a hum of assent even though it wasn’t a question and she’s definitely lying. Sasuke vanishes into the trees, but Shikako is already moving, trying to cut Senju Tobirama off, to buy more time. She’s released her weight seals, and consciously lets her chakra flare. 

Look at me, fight me, don’t look at my teammate. 

Maybe she can talk him down, distract him without dying, she thinks. Who is she kidding? She’s racing towards her doom at record speeds, really.

Then, he’s there and she has a moment of “Shit, the _shirt!_ ” before he sees her and charges.

* * *

Tobirama had originally come out to investigate strange nature chakra fluctuations near the border. Sure, Hashirama had said, had in fact explicitly ordered him to “ _Just stay away from the Uchiha, brother, you’ve done enough damage as is,”_ but, well, he does have a responsibility towards the clan. If it seems like the Uchiha are planning attacks on the Senju compound to retaliate for Izuna’s death, if they’ve somehow found access to nature chakra, or worse, to _seals_ , well, he has to prevent that at all costs. Even if it costs him what little esteem his brother kept for him after he’d betrayed Hashirama’s dreams with the Uchiha a final, second time by striking Izuna down. 

Striking but not killing, apparently. Because if his senses aren’t fooling him — which they never do — Izuna’s chakra signature is stationary a couple miles in front of him, just beyond the edge of Uchiha territory. And, if he’s sensing correctly, he appears to be doing quite well. Not dying at all, in fact. 

What Izuna is doing, just hanging out near the territory border, accompanied by two smaller chakra signatures, one of which must belong to a barely-a-ninja child, Tobirama doesn’t know. But he intends to find out. 

As he draws nearer, a fourth chakra signature flares up, which is concerning because barely anyone can actually evade Tobirama’s sensing. _Dangerous._ This mysterious fourth feels… buzzy. Weak. Almost chakra exhausted. Missing the distinctly Uchiha tang of smoke that is present in the other signatures. Odd. A prisoner? Maybe a non-clan ally... but the Uchiha aren’t known for their alliances. Maybe this is the person messing with nature chakra on behalf of the Uchiha? 

There is movement within their camp, Izuna, the child and the third ninja moving towards where Tobirama knows the Uchiha compound to be while the fourth signature makes a bee-line for Tobirama. A sensor. _Dangerous_. And apparently arrogant enough to think they can face him in their chakra-exhausted state. 

He’s still pondering what to actually do when she comes into his line of sight. He gets a flash of the Uchiha mon on her shirt — a clear indication of whom she is allied to; maybe she’s adopted? — catches the faint chakra buzz of _seals_ all over her arms, and pounces. 

An Uchiha sealmaster is far too dangerous to be left alive, even one so young or new that she or her work have never been used in battle. Because Tobirama would have remembered an opposing seal master, certainly. 

He feels a twinge of regret as his blade finds itself buried in her chest, just off from where he’d aimed to hit her heart. She’s _fast._ Not fast enough though. 

He rarely gets to meet anyone who knows anything about seals and now he’d had to kill her without even being able to see what her creations could do. Maybe he can look at them when he searches her corpse, if she hasn’t implemented dead-man switches or something similar in them... 

Then, tanto still buried to the hilt in the seal girl’s chest and holding her up in the air as she sags and flails, he looks up and finally gets a good look at her face. The thought ‘ _She looks just like Touka,’_ distracts him long enough that he doesn’t recognize her last desperately reaching movements as a purposeful gesture until two small fingers tap him near the chin and he can feel a seal bloom into existence. 

He tries to jump away but he _can’t move, not a muscle_ and the girl is grinning down at him with blood on her lips. 

‘ _Shit,_ ’ flits through his mind, heart-felt, and then everything goes dark.

* * *

Freshly out of Shadow State, hole in her chest cavity all healed up, Shikako crouches down to look at an unconscious Senju Tobirama, Second Hokage, Shinobi of legends. 

She pokes him in the cheek. The knock-out seal on his chin looks like ink stains from a little further away and for some reason that’s just hilarious. Shikako snorts.

She pokes him in the cheek again. He releases air with a little ‘pfft’ sound. 

Shikako giggles. 

Maybe the chakra exhaustion and general panic of a few seconds ago are getting to her now. She had expected to die here. Should have died here. One second she was running at her opponent, the next she had had a sword struck in her chest. No time for greetings or monologues or anything. So cool! If she hadn’t had Shadow State, if he had used the Sword of the Thunder God...Well. She did, and he didn’t, and that’s what matters. He’s the one who’s out cold now. 

This had been way too easy. She’s just defeated Senju Tobirama in battle. Not in _battle_ battle, perhaps, and she definitely only won because she had a trick up her sleeve but hey, a win is a win, right? 

Then, movement at the edges of her sensing range startles her out of her dazed revelry. Right, she’s still exhausted and alone in enemy territory with an unconscious shinobi legend whom she should definitely not let wake up or fall into Uchiha hands. 

_Don’t disrupt the timeline._

She is in so much trouble. Oh, the Nidaime is gonna be so pissed when he wakes up. Could she be trialed for preemptive treason? 

She quickly strips her new prisoner — oh shit oh shit oh shit — of his weaponry, noting with some confusion and disappointment that he doesn’t have the lightsaber with him. That explains why he didn’t use it, at least. She seals a surprising number of knives and shuriken away, and drops everything with a seal on it in her weapons pouch. Then she slaps another knock-out tag on him, a different style of sealing, just in case, and a whole bunch of chakra suppression seals. 

There’s Uchiha stragglers coming — possibly looking for that kid, Kagutsuchi — so she had better move quick. She hefts him up over her shoulder in a too-quick movement that has her swaying. She blinks to rid herself of the sudden dizziness. Right, nearing chakra exhaustion. Great. Sighing, she musters her remaining strength and takes to the trees.

A few minutes later, sitting on some tree branches, Senju Tobirama safely resting within the crown of the large oak, Shikako ponders that she _could_ meet up with Sasuke at the primary location, seeing as she’s survived and everything. 

She should probably give Tobirama back first, though. And make sure there are no ill effects from the double knock out tag, or her applying knock-out tag seals straight to his skin. What if she dumps him somewhere in Senju territory and Senju Tobirama wakes up weak or severely disoriented and then someone murders him and it’s Shikako’s fault when the timeline collapses into a fiery mess. Also, she’d feel bad. 

A little seal geeking- ahem, _information gathering_ from him wouldn’t be amiss, either. She and Sasuke have come into this era blind, and she’s already messed with the timeline this much… It would be worth it, to get their stories straight in case they have to interact with more people to get home. 

She tries to find Sasuke but he’s outside her range for now. She’s not really worried, though, because Sasuke can definitely handle himself against a kid and an injured shinobi. He’s probably found a place to lay low for a while with their strays and will meet her back at their meeting place soon. In a few hours, maybe. She’s really tired. Sasuke probably won’t mind her getting some rest before coming back to the meeting place.

* * *

Sasuke, who had run into _Uchiha Madara_ two minutes into their flight, is somewhat perturbed. Maybe he’s gotten too used to Kako sensing danger, because he’d all but crashed into every shinobi’s worst nightmare with all the situational awareness of a fresh genin. 

To be fair, he’s been a bit distracted. 

“I’ll hold them off,” Kako had said. Not “I’ll deal with them” or “I’ll lead them away.” Kako wouldn’t actually do something stupid, he trusts her, but... It’s official Team 7 policy to sacrifice yourself for your team mates. Kakashi had initiated them into it in Wave, although the tradition itself leads back all the way to the second Hokage, who had died fighting Cloud’s Kinkaku force to allow his students to flee. Sasuke himself hadn’t hesitated to take deadly senbon attacks for Naruto and would do the same for Kako if it should ever prove necessary. Kako herself had tried to counteract their team sacrificial streak with her “Don’t Die” rule but Sasuke knows that she is very ‘Do as I say not as I do’ in that regard. She’d died more times than any of them, after all. 

She’d replaced with him in the Forest of Death to save him from Orochimaru’s kunai, and then less than two months later again to save him from Itachi’s Tsukuyomi. 

If Shikako were to see no other choice, she’d definitely die for him. 

But Kako is smart and resourceful and an unrivaled force of nature when she feels like it; she’d survived some utterly ridiculous things so Sasuke doesn’t feel too bad for worrying about his own survival right now. Especially with Uchiha freaking Madara bleeding killing intent at him two meters away. 

“Uh, hi,” he says and tries to covertly shift Izuna, who is currently almost awake and tucked under Sasuke’s left arm, into a better position to throw at Madara and run with Kagustuchi should the need arise. Apparently he has decided that he’s going to die for this stupid kid that’s choking the life out of him right now, hanging on to his neck to keep from falling from his back. Don’t they teach you tree walking before sending you out in old-times? Apparently not. 

Madara’s continued output of potent killing intent is very at odds with how his posture relaxes when he sees them. 

“Izuna!” He calls out and moves to take his brother from Sasuke, who gives him up very willingly and uses the opportunity to scoot a few meters backwards. Then he is faced by the novel issue of trying not to laugh at the sight of Uchiha Madara holding Uchiha Izuna in a princess carry. What even is his life? One second he’s a normal Black Ops captain fighting normal nin out to kill him like normal, the next he’s looking at the first missing nin cradling his brother in his arms like they’re in the world’s most dramatic soap opera. He doesn’t know how exactly but he blames Shikako. Sasuke swears vengeance. 

Shikako has to be alive for Sasuke to exact righteous vengeance upon her so she better be whole and healthy until he is good and ready to change that, okay?! 

Izuna, far more awake now, seems to agree with Sasuke on the overall ridiculousness of the situation (if not the Shikako bits) because he starts struggling in his brothers arms until he’s standing on solid ground again, although he is still leaning quite heavily on Madara. 

“Izuna,” Madara starts again, worry warring with anger in his tone, “you are supposed to rest!” 

“Rest is overrated.”

“Brother, you’ll die!” 

“I’m dying either way, better nobly on the battlefield then wasting away in bed.” 

Privately, Sasuke thinks that for someone whom Sasuke had found face down in the mud those were very bold words, but the brothers are ignoring him and Kagustuchi so he doesn’t actually say anything. He’s too busy inching further back into the woods and pretending he doesn’t exist. Madara is still spewing killing intent like a fountain full of pissed-off sharks and Sasuke wants to get out of here before anyone gets murdered. 

Then, Madara’s head snaps towards Sasuke and he knows his grace period has run out. “Did you,” Madara angles his body like he wants to round on Sasuke but for Izuna, who is still hanging off him,”assist my brother in leaving his sickbed?” 

“No?” Sasuke tries. 

Madara ‘hn’s in a way that translates directly to “I do not believe you whatsoever.”

Sasuke really wishes for Kako to be here and deal with this. She is definitely better at all this diplomatic stuff. 

“Listen, I found your brother passed out in the forest, I don’t know how he got there.”

“That’s true, you know,” Izuna finally deigns to save him from annihilation by irate Uchiha Madara. “I walked out of the house on my own strength.” 

Madara glares at Izuna again and seems ready to continue his lecture, but then he looks back at Sasuke and little Kagustuchi, who is still doing his best limpet impression on Sasuke’s back and seemingly reconsiders. “Alright, follow me.” 

Sasuke isn’t thrilled about that, he’d been planning to go back into the forest where Shikako was presumably still fighting unknown enemies, but before he can make up an excuse to leave, Kagutsuchi decides to forego being as quiet and unassuming as possible to loudly ask “But what about your sister?” 

Shit. 

“Sister?” asks Madara, sharply. 

Sasuke is too professional to shift guiltily but he is sorely tempted. The thing is, he doesn’t actually mind meeting his old, distant ancestors so long as they don’t attempt to kill him, even if seeing Uchiha walking around being all alive and breathing does funny things to his chest. He still wants Uchiha Madara, missing nin extraordinaire and certified future unhinged lunatic, as far away from Shikako as humanly possible. Just to be safe, you know? 

Once again his hesitance is his downfall, as Kagutsuchi resumes talking. 

“Yeah, Sasuke’s sister! She went to hold off enemies! We gotta help her!” 

Why had they rescued that brat, exactly? ‘We’ would be doing nothing, thank you very much. Sasuke was going to do something, alone.

To prevent any other unfortunate revelations from passing Kagutsuchi’s traitor lips, Sasuke clears his throat. 

“Uh, yeah, my sister, ah, Nakano wanted me to get Kagutsuchi to safety while she led the hostiles away. And now that you’re here he should be safe. So I’m just gonna go see if she needs any backup now, alright? Madara-sama. Izuna-sama.” 

Sasuke nods at the men courteously and tries to leave, which is made somewhat difficult by Kagutsuchi still doing a great impression of a burr on his back. His attempt to detach the little limpet from his back to go find Shikako is interrupted by Madara yelling. 

“Absolutely not!” 

Sasuke is slowly getting somewhat annoyed with the man because well, who made him ANBU Captain in charge of the mission? But the man is still clan head, absolutely terrifying, and putting out enough killing intent to give a chunin heart problems, so Sasuke tries to keep a civil tongue. 

“And why would that be, Madara-sama?” 

Sasuke has finally succeeded in getting Kagustuchi to stand on the ground where he belongs but the kid is still hiding behind him and clutching at his pants leg and absolutely refusing to let go. 

“You don’t have any gear!”

Sasuke has a full kunai pouch and a sword so he doesn’t know what Madara is on about and quite frankly, he’s getting irritated. He holds up the Tanto he carries in the hand that hadn’t been holding Izuna for inspection, careful to make the gesture seem as non-threatening as possible, and levels a blank look at Madara. 

“Sword?”

“You don’t have armor, you don’t have a jacket, you don’t even have a shirt!”

And now Sasuke is getting treated like a child who doesn’t know basic chakra tricks. He doesn’t need a jacket, his shirt is fine and it’s not his fault that he’s left his ANBU chestplate with Shikako. Also, he’s been on enough successful missions without any kind of body armor and he’d rather fight naked than in that clunky monstrosity Madara is wearing. He can’t actually say any of that, tempting though it is. Sasuke’s jaw clenches. 

“Right. I’m still going to go find my sister.”

“No, Sasuke. You are going to go back to the compound where it’s safe, with Izuna and Kagutsuchi. And then _I’ll_ go back to find your sister. Understood?” 

The only thing Sasuke wants less than to be unable to find her himself is for Uchiha Madara to stumble upon Nara ‘Not an Uchiha’ Shikako and decide to murder her for trespassing crimes. Shikako has survived some truly questionable enemies but even Sasuke wouldn’t bet substantial amounts of money on her winning against Uchiha Madara. He can’t just come out and say that, either, though. 

“Listen, I’m not just going to _abandon_ Shi- Nakano like that!”

“You going out like that is going to get you and your sister killed, stubborn child!”

Madara is getting louder now, and closer to him, and he is terrifying but two months ago Sasuke had stood on the snout of a tailed beast and offered it friendship and honestly? At this point he has just accepted his fate. Some day he was going to go on a mission that wouldn’t spontaneously evolve to include Sannin or Time Travel or _Uchiha Madara_ but today is not that day. So he stands his ground. 

Or, he tries to, because Madara makes sure Izuna can stand on his own and then Sasuke goes flying, his sword gets slapped out of his hand and he finds himself lying on an armored shoulder, being carried like a sack of flour. He goes for the neck. 

Or tries to, but at that moment there’s a blast of killing intent that renders him immobile just long enough to assess his recent life choices. Maybe launching a lethal attack on Uchiha Madara is not the greatest idea. And even if he wants to help Kako, he should best stay alive to do that. Otherwise she would be really cross with him, his panic-addled mind goes and he resists the urge to laugh hysterically. 

He’s gonna die, he’s gonna die, why does killing intent make him freeze up like that god damn it, he’s gonna die. 

When the killing intent subsides, he is limp on Madara’s shoulder. That affords him a good look at Kagutsuchi, who has gone paler than a corpse or a chakra-exhausted Shikako. He looks horrified at Sasuke. There are tears.

The kid is probably expecting Sasuke to get murdered any second now. Sasuke isn’t entirely convinced he’s wrong yet, but now that he can think without the killing intent clouding his mind, he can class it as unlikely. Izuna is chuckling, Madara is grumbling underneath him and they don’t seem like they’re planning the execution of a fellow clanmate. So there’s that. 

“It’s alright, Kagutsuchi,” he tries to calm the trembling child down. “Would you go fetch me my sword?” 

That snaps him out of it and he goes hurrying off outside of Sasuke’s current field of vision. 

Instead he now sees Izuna wobbling towards them. “Stay put,” the younger Uchiha brother says, pointing at Sasuke, and scowling. 

His behaviour is understandable as Sasuke had just almost attacked his older brother, but also annoying. Sasuke is already uneasy because he can’t see Madara’s movement anymore, dropped over the man’s shoulder as he is, and his abdominal muscles are straining to get him into a position where he could see anything but Madara’s back. 

Frustration makes him tetchy, okay? And Izuna was walking and talking and putting strain on his wound unnecessarily and should damn well take his own advice. Sasuke can’t be blamed for responding with a testy “Izuna-sama, my sister treated your wound very carefully, I’d thank you not to let her efforts go to waste.”

That brings Izuna up short. Madara goes very still for a second and then shifts abruptly so that Sasuke can no longer see either of them. Great. Yeah, he’s fine here, helpless with two of the strongest shinobi of all time in his blindspot. Just hanging out.

“Izuna, your wound! Doesn’t it hurt?!” 

“It’s- no, I feel... it doesn’t feel like before. It’s still there but… better. I can breathe again. I can think clearly.” 

“Can you walk?” 

“He _shouldn’t_ ! He’ll just aggravate his injuries again, you know?” Sasuke really needs to stop talking. Also, had Izuna really _just_ noticed his fatal wound being healed? 

“Well, what else do you propose, Sasuke?” asked Madara in a growly tone that suggested that he had just about enough of the commentary and that Sasuke was about to meet a painful but short end. Not that that really deterred Sasuke. 

“You could just put me down, pick him up and-”

“No,” say both Uchiha in unison. So, they walk. Slowly. Or, in Sasuke’s case, are carried. Right into the Uchiha compound. 

When Sasuke finds Shikako again, he’s going to kill her, he swears.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to math-is-magic for betaing!

Shikako wakes up from a very short, very uncomfortable, and very insufficient nap in the trees with a shudder despite her chakra regulations. Her muscles feel like lead and she uses what chakra she has managed to regain to flush away the worst of the exhaustion. 

But her head is clearer and she is no longer panicking quite as badly over accidentally kidnapping the future leader of her village so it’s a win overall. 

Mercifully, her captive is still unconscious when she checks on him, with the knock-out seals secure on his forehead and not currently attempting to kill her. She’ll have to find an alternative solution to keeping him knocked out all the time, she’d have to finally finish developing those chakra suppression seals, but for now it should do. Until she’d get to a more secure location. But she can still feel chakra signatures moving in the distance, especially one chakra signature that burns like a wildfire and whose owner she really doesn’t want to meet.

That chakra signature is moving her way.

So she slings her captive over her shoulders, which is only a little inconvenient, and launches herself from her tree branch and onto the next one. Just… one foot in front of the other. Yes.

After an eternity they finally get to the primary location, where Sasuke is supposed to meet her. He’s not there yet. But he had been with nominal allies the last time she’d seen him and he’s _Sasuke_ so she declines to worry about him for now. 

She whisks a scrap of paper out of hammerspace and writes him a quick “Hey, I survived” note, which she signs with a cute doodle of a bat and pins to a tree with a kunai. He’d get it.

Then she goes to find a place for her and her captive to take shelter for the night.

* * *

Tobirama wakes to pain and sluggishness. His head is spinning. Everything hurts. He’s nauseous. He can’t focus. He can’t sense anything. There are pebbles digging into his back and it hurts, it feels too much, it’s too intense. He tries to get up, to get away but he can barely move. He thinks he might be shaking but he isn’t certain. This is, he concludes, not a great situation. One might even go as far as to say it’s pretty bad. 

He tries to open his eyes but he ends up squinting uselessly, trying to make out the branchesabove him. Forest. Everything aches. He feels weaker than he had since he’d been three years old and tiny, bedridden with the flu and the cold every winter. Hashirama used to bring him soup and teas. He’d been so worried. It had been nice, kind of, even with the constant fear of death — from the sickness or to prevent further loss of clan resources. Tobirama remembers his father dragging him outside despite Hashirama’s protests, making him run and run and run because what use is a son so weak he couldn’t even- couldn’t even- Chakra enhance! Right, he knew he was forgetting something. Which is odd because Tobirama is always chakra enhancing these days, he hasn’t forgotten to do it in years. It’s good to build lasting habits. Tobirama instinctively reaches for the chakra that keeps him alive, keeps him strong, intent on doing _something_. Flush away his dizziness, or the encroaching cold, the ache in his back and legs. Chakra sense for enemies. Something. 

He finds nothing. There is no chakra. Horror. He reaches again. Nothing. Not a trace. He tries but he can’t stop the muffled, weak sounds of terror from escaping. Tobirama is alone and chakra-less and weak. He can’t move. It’s so cold and everything hurts. He’s going to die here, he’s going to die- 

Suddenly there is a face in his narrow field of vision. Brown hair. Touka? 

“Oops,” she says. Not Touka, voice too high. Young. Her eyebrows narrow in confusion and… frustration? He doesn’t like it.

“This is bad.” She grimaces. Does she mean Tobirama? She must. There’s a stinging in his eyes and on instinct he tries to smother it with chakra that isn’t there. It gets worse. He tries to move, to flinch back from this — blood, enemy, should be dead — unknown and his head lolls ineffectively to a side. Everything is spinning. He tries to reach his chakra again. Nope, still nothing.

She moves away then — leaves, he hopes she leaves him alone, he hopes she stays — and he hears rustling. 

“I might have made the chakra restraints too strong,” the girl says but the words don’t compute. She… had chakra restraints? There’s a pause and footsteps coming closer. 

“See, I modelled them off this guy I fought in Grass, the blood prison thingie-” here she stops (thingie?!) and suddenly there’s a warm weight gripping Tobirama’s shoulder, a small hand supporting his head as she rearranges Tobirama to lie on something soft.   
Pillows, he thinks before dismissing it, they’re in a forest, why would she have pillows. The persisting ache in his shoulders eases a bit. The sting in his eyes gets worse again and he thinks he might be crying now, if he hadn’t before.

“-but I forgot that most ninja react way worse to chakra deprivation than me.You’d probably adjust after a while though, if it’s any consolation? Possibly once the aftereffects from the knock-out seals wear off.” 

Maybe she hadn’t noticed his current weakness. She didn’t seem to think his behavior under the chakra suppression was odd, though that might be inexperience with the (new?) technique. 

Tobirama knows he’s more reliant on chakra than most, always overcompensating with chakra enhancement to make up for the deficits of his birth, his weak constitution, his inability to use chakra to strengthen himself subconsciously the way his peers could. He can’t afford to slow down and learn to live without the chakra boost, he needs to stay strong for the clan, even though it leaves him so vulnerable in situations like this. And he hadn’t even thought a situation like this possible anyway, real chakra suppression seals in the hands of his enemies when he was only just starting to perfect chakra suppression seals in his lab, it didn’t make sense…

He must have made a noise again because the girl startles and looks at him again in that confusion-frustration-unidentifiable way. 

“You should probably sleep, you’ll feel better afterwards,” she says and there is a hand descending on his forehead, glowing green. Tobirama almost welcomes the darkness this time.

* * *

Tobirama feels a tap on his shoulder and wakes up in a flurry of panic and _Idon’twanttodie_ -horror. His awakening is accompanied by a full-body flinch that pulls at his bindings as he desperately tries to get up, get away, get- wait. Bindings. Survival. He jerks his eyes open wide and tries to get his heart to stop hammering away at his chest as he assesses the situation. 

He dimly remembers having woken up before but he can’t remember anything beyond being panicked and disoriented and weak. At least his thoughts are coherent now. 

They’re still in the forest. It’s evening and there’s a fire crackling a few steps from him, warding off the worst of the autumn chill. Someone had tied him up securely, hands behind his back, and, for some reason, put a blanket around him. In front of him sits the Uchiha girl that he killed. He had killed her, he’d seen it, he’d felt it. 

Genjutsu? It had seemed so real…

“Uh, hello…” The girl begins but he tunes her out. 

He might be restrained but that should be no difficulty if he just uses a bit of chakra. He reaches for his chakra to cut the wire or use the hiraishin and finds it- unresponsive. It’s still very clearly there, but every time he tries to twist or mold more than the barest hint of it, it falls through his grasp like smoke or water. Like it’s just an illusion where a real power should be. He shudders. Chakra suppression seals. Very, very good chakra suppression seals. The girl is getting more and more dangerous. And his situation seems more and more dire. 

He is completely at her mercy. Had been, since she had knocked him out during their fight. Why had she kept him alive?

He must have been too obvious in ignoring the girl because she waves a hand in front of his face. Stupid! She might still need him for something because she hadn’t killed him yet but he could probably still be hurt. Just flat-out ignoring one’s captor was probably the fastest way to lose a finger or two. Shit.

He couldn’t show weakness by apologizing but he moves his head in a way that he hopes conveys “Yes I am listening.”

“...Right. Sorry about the whole,” here the girl moved her arms to indicate the entire area, “kidnapping... thing. Though, to be fair, you were trying very hard to kill me at the time.”

She looks at him expectantly. He wonders if she expects him to apologize for that, too, but he remains silent. That is just how war is, even for little Uchiha girls who look like his cousin. He notes that she sounds very sincere when she says she’s sorry for capturing him, but then again, he is very bad at telling people’s intentions from their tone of voice so he decides that she might just be mocking him.

Not having to go along with whatever this is might actually be worth losing those fingers, he thinks with no small amount of spite. Hashirama could heal him anyway, or he could do without them. Probably. He knows one-handed seals.

When no answer seems to be forthcoming, the girl starts talking again.

“I think you had a bad reaction to the knock-out seals. Or the chakra suppression seals. Possibly both? I hope you feel better now, though. I’m Kako, by the way.” 

He clenches his teeth and wonders idly why his captor insists upon this facade of civility, this small talk information gathering just before she begins the interrogation that hurts. It makes him uneasy and confused. He wishes that she would just get to the point already and begin torturing him because at least then he’d know how to handle the situation. Namely, by dissociating from the pain and trying not to give up any information at all cost. 

Like this, he’s… floundering in the dark, waiting for the first blow to hit. He’d always hated the anticipation more than the punishment itself when he’d been young.

He remains silent. This seems to further displease the girl, she crosses her arms in front of her body and grimaces in a way that betrays her annoyance with him. He really should have just gone along with her attempts at conversation. She is young and he is helpless and it would be so, so easy for her to lash out at him. Expected, really. He is a prisoner, after all. She just kind of keeps staring at him for a while before seemingly giving in and pulling a wrapped bar out of thin air. No, it’s a seal. A storage scroll seal, painted on herself.

She carefully unwraps the bar and holds it under his nose. It smells bland and vaguely of rice flour.

“I know it’s not much, but food is food I guess,” she says. “It’s a ration bar.”

His hands are still tied behind his back so she must expect him to eat out of her hand. He hesitates. 

“It’s not poisoned,” she tries to reassure him but he hasn’t doubted that. If this girl had wanted to poison him, there is little he could do against that at the moment and that helplessness stings. He hasn’t had anything to eat since breakfast yesterday. He needs to remain strong if he wants to escape. If he just does this without a fuss, maybe the girl will forgive his earlier insolence.

He swallows his pride and takes a bite.

She’s rather good at interrogation, he muses while he eats. Barely two minutes in and he’s already off-balance, afraid, incredibly aware of his own helplessness. She hadn’t even _touched_ him and he was already obeying her. 

When he’s eaten the whole ration bar, Kako smiles at him and holds out a bottle of water. Tobirama drinks without complaint and keeps a little swallow of water in his mouth. Suiton Jutsu had always been his specialty. If he could just take her out with a water bullet, or a well-aimed ice shard… But his chakra still stubbornly refuses him, no matter how hard he pushes for it. Oblivious to his foiled attempt to murder her, the girl looks at him again. She meets his stare and doesn’t flinch away from his red eyes the way his clanmates do. Unsurprising, he thinks, given that the Uchiha are her allies. He attempts a sealless genjustu. It fails. No chakra, still. Tobirama breaks eye contact and looks away, at the ground.

“Sorry, I’m going to have to knock you out again,” Kako says. Tobirama flinches away but it’s useless. She _moves_ and there is barely time for panic to swell up in Tobirama’s chest before everything goes dark again.

* * *

Tobirama jerks awake suddenly and can only just stop himself from moving. Light shines through his closed eyelids. Morning, then. It’s colder but he’s still wrapped in the blanket, lying on a comfortable mat. How odd to procure camping supplies for a prisoner. How odd to leave him alive through the night with no-one to guard him. She must trust her seals immensely. Where had the Uchiha found someone like _this?_

He stays very still and hopes Kako assumes he is still asleep from the after-effects of the knock-out tag. Sometimes people under the influence of knock-out seals don’t wake up immediately, especially civilians without chakra. If he’s very lucky his chakra suppression seals also stopped her from noticing that he is awake through sensing. 

He chances a glimpse at his captor. Kako is deep in thought over a notebook, brush in hand and her face pulled into a grimace of frustration. There are ink-stains on her face.

He quickly shuts his eyes again. She had looked the absolute opposite of intimidating. She had looked… soft. Like him, in the privacy and safety of his lab, picking away at a seal into the early morning hours. The Uchiha-fan embroidered shirt she is wearing is several sizes too big for her. He hadn’t noticed that before. Unbidden, it occurs to Tobirama that Kako must be years younger than him, even younger than he had first thought. Almost still a child, really.

There’s still a gash in the shirt the size of his fist, blood staining the fraying edges even darker. A wound that would have killed anyone else within minutes, even if she had dodged just enough for him to miss her heart by a fraction. She shifts and he catches a glimpse of unblemished skin underneath.

“Urg, why can’t this just make sense,” she mutters.

There is a pang in his chest, that Tobirama promptly buries. Nobody ever talks freely in front of him except maybe for Hashirama, and even he had found better people to complain to after his marriage. Though, that’s not fair. Touka talks to him, during training. Mito, too, when she finds the time. And what is wrong with him, anyway? He’s still prisoner to a dangerous Uchiha sealmaster and possibly about to be horribly murdered. Now is not the time for such frivolous musings! 

She really looks just like Touka, he can’t help but think. This girl had darker hair and paler skin and could almost pass for an Uchiha, but there was no mistaking her cheekbones or the shape of her nose. How is it that a girl with obvious Senju blood would choose to ally with the Uchiha of her own free will? Maybe they raised her in secret, Tobirama thinks, to be the answer to his own sealing and speed and sensing. A rather arrogant sentiment, but as likely an explanation as anything. But she hadn’t thrown him at Uchiha Madara’s feet yet... 

Why can’t he concentrate, damn it? He needs to escape! Maybe he’s still panicking, just a little. There’s just something about being cut off from his chakra, especially his chakra sensing, that sends his heart racing uncomfortably in his chest.

He hears movement in front of him and opens his eyes on instinct to find Kako looking straight at him. She brightens before he has time to panic.

“You’re awake!”

* * *

Madara trudges through the forest in a miserable mood. He’s leading a small squad of shinobi — whoever was available really — into the forest in search of Uchiha Nakano. Nobody is talking, which Madara tries to believe is because lurking Senju might hear them. Whatever. Not having to interact makes it easier to think, anyway. His emotions are a complete mess right now and there was really nothing he could do about it. 

When he had come back to the house to find Izuna gone from his sickbed, his gear half missing, half haphazardly strewn around the room as if he had attempted to put it on and given up halfway through, he’d been terrified. He had envisioned finding Izuna dead somewhere in the forest. He had been furious at Izuna for robbing himself of his chance of recovery — for robbing Madara of the desperate illusion that everything was going to be okay.

He had been even angrier at himself.

But, well, he found Izuna again and that was all that mattered. 

And, as it turns out, maybe everything is going to be okay, Madara reminds himself as he reaches the clearing he had stumbled upon Sasuke in. Izuna is breathing easier. Izuna could walk almost the entire way to the compound on his own, even though Madara suspects that he had been in pain for most of it. But nobody knows his little brother’s stoic pride better than him. The medics had all made very surprised and astonished noises at Izuna’s wound when it had been re-dressed and Madara really wants to take that as a good sign. 

Then they had asked who had treated Izuna’s injuries. And who, exactly, had used what must have been a chakra technique to save Izuna’s lung.

Sasuke had very reluctantly admitted to his sister Nakano treating Izuna before going off on her own to deal with incoming enemies, because _‘we found him face-down in the dirt, okay, obviously something was wrong and ‘Kako’s good at that stuff!_ ’. So now, instead of Izuna and a small child they are missing a teenage healing prodigy nobody had ever heard of. A medic who had gone off on her own to fight instead of leaving the defense to her obviously strong but equally unheard of brother.

She’s probably dead. Madara knows a suicidal move when he hears of one. Case in point: Uchiha Sasuke very politely excusing himself to go back into the Senju-infested woods alone in search of his sister after deeming his mission of getting two clan members to safety complete. 

Now, as someone who had also just gone out into the Senju-infested woods alone in search of his sibling, Madara understands the impulse. Better than most, at least. But Madara is second only to Hashirama, a legend of Shinobi, a dark spectre on the battlefield that even hardened Ninja rightly fear. Sasuke is barely fourteen. 

From the look on his face, it hadn’t even occurred to him to ask the Clan’s strongest shinobi for help, or backup, or for anyone to do anything except give him leave to go get himself killed.

Madara wonders what the boy with Izuna’s face would say if he knew that Madara is glad that Izuna made it home instead of Nakano. Izuna would disagree but privately, Madara is fiercely and shamefully glad that Izuna had come back to him, even at the cost of another young, talented clan member. Even if now another older brother has to suffer the pain Madara gets to leave behind. When they don’t find her, Madara resolves, they’ll still do right by her; they won’t let Sasuke fade back into obscurity to run missions without even a coat to his name. They’ll give him gear. They’ll take him in, if he agrees. 

“Split up, look for Uchiha Nakano. She’s about fourteen, brown hair and eyes, no or limited gear.” The squad splits up with a sharp affirmative, leaving Madara standing alone under the trees. This is pointless, really. 

He can’t forget Sasuke’s voice cracking when he yelled at Madara that he wasn’t going to abandon his sister.

They owe it to at least bring her body home.

Madara activates his Sharingan, following the barely-there chakra traces Sasuke had left when he’d made his way through the trees. It’s difficult, and he almost loses track several times; Sasuke had utilized the trees instead of running on the ground like a normal person and Madara has no doubt that if he hadn’t been so hurried and distracted with getting two bodies to safety, Madara wouldn’t be able to track him at all. 

It’s concerning — nobody could have taught him this; it’s not common Uchiha practice at all. Another oddity in an already expansive puzzle of things that just don’t add up. For poor orphans without any discernible background or connections, without any hope to afford teachers or tutors beyond basic education, Sasuke and Nakano Uchiha were incredibly skilled. Not to mention Nakano’s apparently incredible medical skills. The only person Madara knows to use medical jutsu is Hashirama.

Sasuke looks just like Izuna. It’s like seeing double, except for the baby fat that still clings to Sasuke’s face and the few inches Izuna had grown since he had been fourteen. The definition in his cheekbones makes Izuna’s resemblance to their father even more obvious. Privately, Madara thinks it’s kind of adorable, like finding an almost forgotten childhood toy under his bed. His brother had been so small, once. 

Beyond that, Madara doesn’t particularly want to examine why there is a nameless orphan with his brother’s face and almost suicidal dedication to protecting fellow clan members out there, though he knows he’s going to be forced to, sooner or later. 

Madara comes onto a small clearing that has all the markings of a hastily abandoned camp. The campfire is so fresh it could still be smoking. He looks around. Traps, made with ingenuity and what you can find in a forest — some clumsy, some so concealed he can barely evade them. There are blood splashes here, but those come from Nakano treating Izuna’s wound. So does the flesh. There are patches of goop Madara thinks might be flesh near the fire like someone was planning to burn them, only to be interrupted before they could. Madara shudders at the thought of _this_ having been attached to Izuna at some point. 

The trail Sasuke took to get Izuna and the child to safety is obvious now that Madara has been following it for a while — The trail his sister took to confront the enemy is very much not. He can barely make it out. There’s no chakra trail at all. The only clue Madara has about what direction Nakano went are slight scuff marks on the branches that indicate the way she went, almost invisible. He follows them until suddenly the chakra marks are clear as day and obvious to even the most untrained sharingan user. A signal! Madara speeds up, following the trail until it’s end between the trees. He scopes out the place. Where could she have gone? There are no more paths or trails. 

Suddenly, he feels… a presence. He can’t see anything but his senses haven’t been fooled yet and they blare at him that _something is there._ He turns wildly. There! Leaves moving without a breeze to explain their behavior. 

Madara’s mangekyou whirls to life and suddenly Sasuke is in sharp focus, crouching on a branch and obviously disguising himself with a jutsu. Sasuke is supposed to be safely in the compound, watched by Hikaku and Izuna. Really, after he had almost attacked Madara himself to be able to go after his sister himself they should have expected this, but his stealth jutsu were prodigal. Incredible. If Izuna and Hikaku had been fooled by something like whatever he was using right now, Madara would understand. 

“What are you doing here?” he hisses, careful to keep his voice down. There might still be enemies around and any amount of disguise jutsu would mean shit if they screamed their location out to everyone within a mile. 

“Nakano’s my- my sister, Madara-sama. Did you really think I’d stay put while she was in danger?” Okay, he has a point there. Madara can empathise. And anyone who can actually talk to him without crying or shaking or begging automatically earns bonus points with him anyway, he’s self-aware enough to admit that. 

“Anyway,” Sasuke continues brightly, pulling out a scrap of paper, “we can go. She left a note, she’s fine, just running an errand before returning.”

That’s a weak excuse — nobody just _runs errands_ outside the clan during war times, certainly not with Senju enemies on the loose — but Madara acquiesces. He doesn’t want to argue this. 

“Right, let’s go back then,” he says instead. “Or do I have to carry you again, disobedient brat?”

Sasuke easily complies with being herded in the direction of the compound and Madara tries to swallow the lump in his throat. The boy with Izuna’s face turns around and grins at him, a little hesitantly, and Madara hopes he hasn’t seen the blood stains on the grass. The ones soaked in his sister’s chakra. Not yet. 

It might be selfish but Madara doesn’t want grief to snuff out this boy’s bright flame just yet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm gonna be hella busy all throughout September so chapter 3 might take a while.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lived. It's been what, 8, 9 months?  
> Thanks so much to math-is-magic for betaing this and enduring my persistent whining about this story. It's finished now and only needs to be edited. So there should be more updates in the next few months.  
> Also, I have recursive fic! I'm so happy! Everyone who hasn't already, check out "A Conversation Overheard By A Captive Faking Unconsciousness" by the talented SlowMercury!

Shikako has decided that she is kind of disappointed with how this whole venture is turning out. She gets it, she supposes, because she did kidnap Tobirama and everything, and there was that incident with her accidentally making the chakra suppression seals way too strong — which she still feels really bad about, even if he does keep trying to sneakily fire off offensive techniques in her general direction, and wow, she’s so glad the seals are holding up so far — but he’s just not talking to her. 

This was not at all how she saw meeting her heroes going, what with the lack of Edo Tensei and mad Uchiha Madara just over the horizon, sure. So this is probably the best scenario she could hope for. But he just keeps being really quiet and warily looking at her and feeling all sad and afraid. She feels really bad, okay? 

There’s nothing she can do about that though, so she puts on a smile and they eat breakfast ration bars in silence. 

“So,” she says once they’ve finished the food, “what now?”

Tobirama glares at her in a way that very clearly communicates “You’re the one in charge here, dumbass,” with a light, wary addition of “I still fully expect you to kill me,” which, while fair, really isn’t helpful. 

Internally sighing, she stands up for some morning stretches and then goes back to the cushion and the low wooden table she’d set up with her notebooks under the shade of one of the gigantic, broad-leaved trees, a meter or so away from Tobirama. 

After all, they aren’t really here to socialize, however much she’d like to. She took Tobirama, now she has to figure out how to put him back without getting him killed or giving him the chance to murder her. Maybe an involuntary shunshin and a timed release of the chakra restraints... Or, better yet, if she could manage it, some form of teleportation. 

She could probably manage that. And if she wanted to show off to her sealing hero just a little bit, well, nobody ever had to know.

Tobirama just keeps warily watching her from where he had wiggled — tying him up with ninja wire is a necessary precaution, she reminds herself — to lean against one of the mossy trees. He’s staring at her like she’s a threat, with thinly veiled fear, and it’s driving her up the wall. She wishes Sasuke were here instead of waiting for her somewhere in the forest, so she could have a distraction from the fear and resignation in Tobirama’s chakra and the eyes boring into her back, but she wouldn’t risk him like that. If Tobirama somehow escaped, like she half feared he would despite the seals and restraints holding strong so far, only one of them would get murdered. 

Besides, having an Uchiha here while he was helpless would probably make Tobirama feel even more terrified. He might even cry again, like he had when he’d first woken up without chakra. No, Sasuke being far away from here is best for everyone involved.

In a desperate attempt to fill the supremely awkward silence and maybe, possibly stop him from being terrified and grating on her chakra sense, Shikako stands up to crouch down beside Tobirama and starts talking.

“Okay, so like I said, I’m Kako. I like training, gyoza and my precious people. I dislike my precious people getting hurt and people underestimating me. My dream for the future is to get strong enough to protect my precious people.”

He looks at her a little wild-eyed and she valiantly tries not to let it put her off. At least confusion has replaced some of the terror.

“Now you, Tobirama-san. Name, likes, dislikes, dreams for the future.” Tobirama stares at her for a long moment before sagging and giving in.

“Senju Tobirama. Research. Threats to the clan. I don’t dream.” 

Really… Honestly, she gets that she is a scary spooky enemy but he is really just being stubborn at this point. Or maybe his life is just very sad. They were at war, after all.  _ I don’t dream. _

“Great! Say, you wouldn’t mind helping out with a seal project for a bit?”

“I’ll die before I surrender clan secrets to an enemy.”

Right, what had she expected? The terror was back full-force.

“Of course,” she forces a light, cheery tone, “We’ll table that then.”

He looks at her like he is expecting… something. Retaliation. For not giving up his sealing knowledge. It makes her surpremely uncomfortable. 

Just because she would definitely be willing to kill  _ someone _ for the treasure trove that is Tobirama’s brain, doesn’t mean she’d ever kill  _ him  _ for such petty reasons. 

She stands up, trying not to startle Tobirama with sudden movements, and settles back onto her cushion, further away from her captive. His shoulders relax minutely. It’s going to take some time for her to get Tobirama back to the clan compound safely and she really hopes that it’s not going to be like this the entire time.

There is a brief, awkward silence. 

For now, Kako can’t change anything. Best just accept it and get some work done. Blindly groping for an excuse to forget the entire conversation, she summons a notebook from hammerspace and starts babbling about seals.

“So I’m going to get some seal-work done now, shout if you need anything. And if you hear any explosions, just ignore them, okay? It’s a transportation seal so I’m trying to get it to stop doing that but…” She trails off. 

There’s a spark of what might be sympathy in Tobirama’s chakra and it cheers her up even in the face of complicated high-stakes work. She’s definitely not going to accidentally explode him in the course of getting him home! Now if only this seal would stop being so complicated...

Groaning and forgetting about her captive audience, Shikako dips her brush in the ink pot she had laid out on the table together with her scrolls and books.

Time to seal herself out of this mess.

* * *

Watching wide-eyed as the young seal-master — and it is getting more and more apparent that she is a master of her craft — loses herself in her work, Tobirama feels… something. A kinship, maybe. Certainly this is the most interesting captivity he’d ever experienced. The most confusing as well. What kind of enemy asks about his  _ dreams for the future _ ?

It had seemed like she wanted to draw him into a conversation earlier, no matter how trivial. She hadn’t even asked about intel or anything useful yet, besides the too-obvious mention of sealing help. Maybe it’s a trick, to lull him into a false sense of security and make him slip up later. And what’s worse, it seems to be working.

Twice now he’s had to restrain himself from chiming in, itching to have a discussion about seals, about her fascinating theories. Half-formed sentences hinting at thought-processes he was wholly unfamiliar with, carelessly mumbled as the young girl vigorously worked on her seals. In front of a prisoner. She really is planning to kill him, isn’t she?

If he’d been able to capture her in their short clash, he could have justified letting her live and they could have talked about seals for weeks, months, until her knowledge would have been exhausted and he’d have to kill her, too strong a foe to ransom her back to the Uchiha. 

He probably would have gotten attached by then. 

Unwillingly a fantasy pops up in his mind, of her defecting to the Senju — it wouldn’t even be hard, she could pass for Touka’s cousin in a heartbeat, they could make up any kind of story about her origin — and working with him in the laboratory. They wouldn’t be friends, he doesn’t know how to forge a connection like that, but her help would be invaluable in creating the tools that kept his clan safe. 

Maybe if he proved that he could take care of an assistant, Hashirama would finally grant him a real student. As close to a dream as he could conjure up, even if he hadn’t told  _ her _ that.  With luck, Hashirama would even accept it as proof of his humanity and start questioning the idea that Tobirama was obsessed with conquest and warfare to the exclusion of everything else, just like their late father. Or that he wasn’t completely apathetic to human suffering. Whatever Hashirama presumably thought about him. Probably not, though.

It is probably a testament to his loneliness that he is even entertaining such thoughts. Unbelievable. Tobirama is  _ pathetic _ , less than 24 hours in and instead of working on his escape, he is dreaming up a life with his captor. This is the kind of weakness his father had tried and regrettably failed to expunge in him.

But when had someone last asked him what he liked, what he dreamt about? Someone had, once, right?

Besides, the fact that she is even letting him listen to her seal-creation, gleaning any kind of understanding of her techniques, means that she is planning to kill him. You couldn’t give an enemy this kind of knowledge, knowledge he would have killed and bled for, and let them walk away. She might be keeping him alive for now — under heavy, crushing chakra restraints and tightly bound wire — for reasons he couldn’t discern, but he would likely never return to his clan again.

The thought saddens him less that he would have assumed.

Sure, Hashirama would grieve for him, and then he and Mito would move on to build a future of peace with the Uchiha who would be far more willing to trust them with the Senju Demon gone. Nobody makes peace with the monster they tell their children will get them if they misbehave. 

Even Izuna would be easier to convince of Hashirama’s sincerity without his nemesis at his back, or however Izuna refers to him in his mind. Uchiha Izuna, Tobirama had always suspected, had a tiny bit of flair for the dramatics. Not many noticed, eclipsed as they both were by the shadows of their sun-bright elder brothers, even in this aspect. But Tobirama knew.

Maybe Izuna would even be a bit peeved that he was gone. He’d want to drive in the sword himself, Tobirama reckoned. All these years of rivalry, oneupmanship and almost-dying, leading up to what? A wound that would only have been deadly in the first place because Izuna stubbornly refused Hashirama’s help, miraculously healed, and Tobirama vanishing off the surface of the earth before any revenge could be had? He’d hate that.

Touka, she would almost certainly be sad. Touka likes him. But such is the nature of war, and Touka has other friends and family. She is strong and well-liked. She would grieve and move on and he’d be forgotten, his only legacy the legislation Hashirama would upend once he bull-headed his way into making the village a reality and perhaps the jutsus whose creator’s name would not be remembered two generations from now, which would become obsolete relics as new geniuses like this strange, brilliant girl continued pushing the boundaries of chakra. A forgotten ghost.

Impending doom makes him both maudlin and  _ dramatic _ , apparently. 

Dreadful. He had already given up. This won’t do.

He won’t just lay down and die, just because the situation seems dire and the enemy isn’t outright cruel enough to inspire spite. He won’t. He has to focus.

Of course this had to happen to him. It’s not like he hasn’t been under enough stress anyway, recently, what with Izuna presumed dead and the winter preparations. Maybe he should get some more sleep, now that he has an excuse… no. He has no way to know when his captor will decide that he’s outlived his usefulness.

Internally groaning, he focuses on his surroundings. The small, grassy clearing on whose edge they’d made camp is unfamiliar, and he does not know the species of the giant trees surrounding them, so it is likely far away from both the Senju and the Uchiha lands. Not good. Pretty, though, with the sunlight softly filtering through the leaves, painting the grass golden and the foliage a thousand shades of green and red. The birds are singing, too, and there are still bugs buzzing, even though they are approaching autumn. 

Then there is the girl, who, after digging up a small fire pit beside them, had somehow dragged a whole wooden table into the middle of nowhere. Most likely, she’d unsealed it from a storage scroll. Who carries around a scroll just for a table, though? And who spreads out their research in the midst of the woods for any enemy to stumble upon. Hell, he could just shift over a bit and see-

Now there is an idea. 

She will undoubtedly kill him for risking it, but. She’ll kill him anyway. And she is still absorbed in her work, mumbling about measurement units and flow regulation seals. A few stray leaves and sticks had made their home in her messy braid and she hadn’t noticed yet, dead to the world around her. Tobirama had risked his life for smaller scraps of sealing knowledge. And in his current state, his life is forfeit anyway. He has nothing to lose.

He inches closer.

It works, at first. She doesn't seem to notice him straining to glimpse at the papers on her desk, so occupied is she, writing furiously into her notebook. 

Her notes are mostly in kanji. It’s the first thing he notices. Curious, to stumble upon someone so highly learned alone in the forest — of all the ninja clans whose education practises he knows, only the Uzumaki taught branch members anything more than hiragana or katakana. He knew more than most, even other clans’ main families. It had been necessary in order to convince Butsuma to let him take care of their correspondence with the daimyo and the capital. The reprieve of doing paperwork instead of training or missions for a few hours a week had been well worth the sleepless nights of learning.

Tobirama had tried, of course, to further literacy education for the children, but Hashirama hadn't thought much of it — he hadn’t seen the point, always bored of calligraphy practise as a child, eager to go out and train while Tobirama had craved these little bits of rest, weak runt that he was — and few of the elders would back any suggestion that wouldn't directly support the war effort, however much he'd tried to dress it up. 

Maybe Kako had thought Kanji to be security enough for her writings? When he tries to make sense of them, though, he notes with crushing disappointment that they must have been further encrypted. 

But, she’d sketched out some of her seals, and from them, Tobirama can still extract a wealth of information. There is something that seems to be an explosive seal on a page near to his vantage point, an easy assumption given that the Kanji for explode is front and center, but it isn't in any sealing style he knows. 

_ Seal master _ . He’d known she was, but this really hammered it home again. She is a master of her craft.

The great seal masters of Uzushio had created their own languages of sealing. Those codes and ciphers were usually passed down through clans, from master to apprentice, with the strongest students building and innovating on foundations set hundreds of years ago. With every generation, or individual, the language changed drastically but it's roots were usually recognizable. Some elements just made so much sense, nobody had thought to use anything different for decades.

Tobirama had started to create his own style with the help of some outdated Uzumaki scrolls Whirlpool had traded to them for exorbitant prices. And with time and experience, and a lot of trial and error — Hashirama had made him move out after the third time he’d blown a hole in the roof — his sealing language had diverged more and more from the scraps he had started out with.

And yet if one were to look closely, they'd still find those same bare bones of Uzumaki sealing.

He barely recognizes anything familiar in her seal at all. 

She must have learnt sealing somewhere far away with barely any Uzumaki influence. Fascinating.

Or... invented an entirely new school of sealing herself.  _ Terrifying. _

Gods, if they had met in any other circumstances, he would have jumped like a toad-summons at the chance to talk seals with her. This new, different way of thinking, the things he could learn...

There was strange romaji script curling along the edge of almost familiar spirals, twists and scribbles that hint at concepts he knew, and strange breaks in the pattern he couldn’t make sense of. 

Romaji had fallen out of common use centuries ago. Tobirama does not know any clan that still taught it. Who is this girl?

Giving up on reading anything for now, Tobirama spares a second to glance over Kako’s entire work table. Maybe if he’s lucky, he will find some unencrypted scraps somewhere in the stacks of paper. Or maybe if he somehow managed to flee with some of these scrolls, he could crack the code in time. 

Interesting note-taking style, he observes. Just a few scrolls and booklets lay open, presumably for her to consult while she filled the pages of her paperback bound book, all written in neat calligraphy and that impeccable Kanji-based code. But from some of those scrolls, heaps of loose pages fluttered forth. She’d likely jammed them in there, peeking out between pages and scrolls, because they belonged with the topics. Half thought-out notes to revisit later or simply additions that wouldn’t fit on the neat scrolls. There is something that looks like a paper napkin, chock-full of chicken-scratch mathematical functions, complete with a little graph, under a heavy looking notebook. And there, a few small doodles of what looked like little bats and stick figures in the corner of a messy page of different spiral designs. Frankly, it is kind of adorable.

This mess looks just like his own personal notes. For a second Tobirama feels guilt, like he is somehow seeing something private, something personal to Kako that he shouldn’t intrude on. But he shakes off these ridiculous notions. Mulishly, he thinks that if she didn’t want anyone looking at her notes she shouldn’t have spread them out on a table in the middle of the woods. Really, hasn’t she ever heard of op-sec? 

Also, if they had to flee, how would she have time to seal all these little things away? Unless she had a seal that would take care of the papers all at once… But that line of thought is its own kind of terrifying, so he puts it away for now.

He sizes up the explosive seal again, trying to make sense of it despite his lack of understanding of romaji or her specific code. Next to the romaji strings that circle the odd triskelion — something he thinks he’s seen in an Uzumaki barrier once, perhaps — numbers were listed. Maybe she’d created the seal to be quickly modifiable?

They weren’t low numbers. He gulps. 

In the corner, a quick, smudged calculation for the radius of… something, probably the explosion, spit out a number of some 400 square meters. There was an odd squiggle denoting another variable, which looks just like the loop the Uzumaki use to measure chakra input. How careless of her, not to encode it.

Tobirama had carefully never let himself think about weapons like these, which could eradicate clans and villages. Not while Butsuma had been alive — he’d had a front row seat to many of the man’s increasingly unhinged rants about the Uchiha and how they should all die in his last months after all — and  _ certainly _ not during Hashirama’s reign, albeit for entirely different reasons. 

This seal though, with the right modifications, is likely a weapon of mass destruction. If, of course, it doesn’t take too long to gather the amount of nature chakra an explosion of that size would require. Even then, it is concerning to find sealwork of such magnitude in a complete unknown’s hands.

He doesn’t know what most parts of her seal do, but those he can read, scare him. 

“Something interesting?”

Tobirama flinches back  _ hard _ . 

“I didn’t see anything, I swear,” is out of his mouth before he can stop himself. He flushes hot with shame the second it registers. It is the single worst lie anyone has ever told, ever, but it had been reflex. Expressing contrition quickly was a way to ameliorate the insult of questioning his superiors. Or snooping where he didn't belong. 

It is always his curiosity that gets him into trouble.

Then, he blinks and wonders why he is even holding onto concepts such as dignity or shame anymore. Kako is not his superior, for all that she’s currently holding his life in her palms. She’s not clan. He can be as shit at lying and as childish with his excuses as he wants because nobody is here to witness it except for Kako and she’ll just have to deal with it. What is she going to do, break some fingers? He is a ninja, he would deal, even without chakra to blunt the pain. 

Kill him? She’s going to anyway, after he’s seen her seals. If she let him go, she has revealed herself to be too dangerous an enemy to not hunt her down. 

And if he ever told anyone about the seals in her possession, it would be wholesale war about who got to her first. And what they would do. 

The human body cannot sustain the state of fear and panic indefinitely. He had... not stopped fearing an imminent demise, or a painful interrogation, but the terror that had gripped him upon waking up had, for the most part, subsided. No longer is he quite as intimidated into silence, fearful of accidentally saying the wrong thing and setting her off. Surely if she were the type to lash out, his stubborn refusal to engage in “conversation” with her would have provoked her already?

And yet, he could not help a tiny spike of dread in his stomach at the reprisal he would certainly face for glimpsing at her research.  _ Weak. _ Tobirama is a captured ninja, he should be resigned to death and pain, but he is still so stupidly afraid.

“Uh, you can look at my notes if you want?” The girl says, confusion coloring her voice. 

_ What? _

He swallows a startled noise, pulling his shock back under control. That was…. Unexpected. Infinitely preferable to torture. At least he’d get to satisfy his curiosity before she slit his throat. Which she had just once more implicitly confirmed she would, if she is willing to share any kind of knowledge with him. She would have to prevent him from using it against her later, such were the rules of this world. 

He forces himself to shelve that thought.

At least he will get to look at her research beforehand! New, exciting sealing theory! Sure, most of it is horribly encrypted but still. In any other circumstances this would make his whole year, and even certain doom can’t keep a small smile off his lips.

In for a kunai, in for a holster.

“You are a seal master,” he says, hesitantly crawling over as best he can and glancing at her fascinating papers again. “Where did you learn?”

Her cheeks redden. It is the strangest thing. 

“I dabble. I’m not that good yet.” She laughs a sheepish little laugh. She is not fooling anyone. Even Tobirama is a better liar than her. 

“Did someone else write these notes, then? Did they develop the seals?” 

“Uh, no, I did-” 

“And set them with a touch in the middle of battle, while hit?”

“That’s not- I wasn’t really  _ hit,  _ I-”

Kako is tripping over her words, going red but there is no killing intent in the air. For a moment Tobirama is so caught up in the novelty of friendly teasing that he almost forgets how she could just start cutting off fingers in retribution. That she is an enemy. A small laugh escapes him, echoing through the clearing, and the unfamiliar sound startles him. 

Kako stops spluttering.

“I’m, ah, mostly self-taught, I guess.” She settles on. Of course she is. As if she isn't already pants-shittingly terrifying, Tobirama thinks with a faint touch of hysteria. His captor is leagues better than he was at her age. Planting seals by  _ touch _ . Nobody who can just  _ do _ that could ever convincingly deny mastery. 

Kako had defeated him easily, while exhausted, and had taken no injuries. A “complete smack-down” as Touka might remark, or an "ass-kicking". Who is she kidding with this bashful act?

Maybe it is one of the social nuances Tobirama has never quite mastered. In order to keep all his fingers attached to his hand, he doesn’t push his luck arguing further about why exactly she is or isn’t a seal master. Besides, he is far more interested in the writing he has been allowed access to _.  _

A strangled sound leaves Kako’s throat as she follows his gaze to her table. She reaches over in a rush, almost spilling her ink. Within seconds, the napkin, the doodle page, and a few other scraps he hadn’t seen at first, all disappear. When he looks at her in confusion, he finds that she is resolutely looking away into the forest. Maybe there was sensitive information on those? Or perhaps she is embarrassed because her notes aren’t very neat. After all, she has never seen the verifiable mess that is Mito’s workplace, or a single page of Hashirama’s paperwork. His foolish big brother is incapable of not doodling flowers on any scap he can find. So many important letters Tobirama had had to rewrite...

Tobirama takes some time to savor looking through Kako’s notes. So much knowledge, so many new things! If only he didn’t have to die to access them. Now all the ideas her strange, unfamiliar seals sparked in his brain would stay unrealized. What a waste. 

But he can’t focus on that right now, with all these new seals right in front of him! There are prototypes for what he thinks is a barrier! And a… kinetic amplification seal? Something like that. Fascinating really, even if he can’t make heads or tails of most of it.

And everywhere that strange romaji script. Maybe it was an ancient language, passed down through a clan for generations. Or maybe it is just… hers.

What a shame that he can’t read most of it. Maybe… What he is thinking of doing is reckless beyond measure but if she has already allowed him access to her notes, maybe she wouldn’t mind answering some questions? She is going to kill him anyway, and she seems sure that he won’t be able to use her notes to escape, otherwise she would have simply taken them away or scratched out his eyes when he’d first peeked at them.

“This is-” he speaks up and almost loses his nerve when Kako’s head whips up a little too fast- “an explosive seal, yes? With an adjustable destruction radius?”

Tobirama holds his breath. He got out all the words without stumbling over his tongue, at least. Now to hope she won’t cut it out for asking.

Her smile is blinding.

“Yeah,” she says, pulling the page he’d first looked at closer. “I call them my Touch Blasts.”

That name. It certainly implied things. Explosives set by touch. A dangerous ability. Come to think of it, Kako had used touch to put a seal on him in that disastrous fight where she had captured him, hadn’t she? A knock-out seal, placed while hanging from his sword.

A disconcerting notion, that she could have used this seal instead, just made his head, his most valued commodity, explode like an overripe melon. Maybe it requires more concentration to place?

“It’s the first seal I ever made.”

Something must have shown on his face, because she lets out a resigned sigh. 

“Yeah, that certainly didn’t do my reputation any favours.”

With that ominous statement, she shakes her head and flashes him another grin that he thinks might be meant to reassure. Predictably, it doesn’t quite work.

“Well, anyway, the spiral gathers and holds the necessary nature chakra to fuel it once it’s set and there on the edges, I can adjust the explosion.”

“Adjust,” he echoes.

“You know, size, duration, heat,  _ sound. _ ” She gestures, miming an explosion with her hands. “I don’t want to use completely different seals for every little thing, after all.”

Every little thing. Well, that is certainly a way to put it. Tobirama absolutely refuses to feel embarrassed about the amount of time he had had to work at his flash-bang seal to get it both loud, bright and non-lethal enough for practical use.

Who cares if it now looks completely different from his common explosive?! Just because his seals aren’t as malleable doesn’t make them inferior, it makes them  _ specialized _ . Custom-made to be ideal for specific situations, easy for laymen clan members to use in a pinch. Yes, indeed.

“Oh, and time I guess,” Kako amends sheepishly. “For traps, or if I have to go too far away to activate it remotely.” 

Now this is just unfair. Tobirama is getting really tired of the heart palpitation Kako somehow manages to induce in him every few minutes. Somehow, Kako had created time-adjustable, size-adjustable, heat-adjustable explosives she could set in a split second and activate from a distance. 

Well, Tobirama could probably also create a high-heat explosive, or a remote controlled one, but not this quickly when the situation demands it. Not just by changing some numbers in his mind, at least not with his current design. He can admit when a design is more efficient than what he is currently using.

His fingers itch for a brush.

“Certainly impressive,” he admits. Another grin appears on Kako’s face, before she ducks back into her own work with a mutter he doesn’t quite catch. The tips of her ears are red. 

Really, she is far too humble. If he had captured her instead, and forced her to explain all her notes, all her seals in detail, who knows how much his craft would have advanced! Already his mind is whirring with ideas how to make his own seals more easily adjustable, more efficient. How terribly sad that he won’t ever get to actually implement these ideas.

And worse, he won’t ever be able to implement countermeasures to her bombs. Her size-adjustable time-bombs. 

“Just out of curiosity, how much could the radius of these be expanded?” Tobirama fails in keeping his tone light, but Kako doesn’t seem to notice. She looks up with a frown, and taps her brush against her chin, thinking.

“Hmm, it’s not really practical beyond a certain size,” she muses, which tells him precisely nothing, “because it’ll either catch you in the blast or the chakra build-up will become too noticable and alert your enemies too soon.”

She smiles at him and he represses a shudder. What is that light in her eyes? An intimidation tactic?

“If you wanted to level, say, a city, I wouldn’t do it with these.” She nods thoughtfully, like what she is saying is very reasonable and sensible. “The explosion might get too cool on the edges and not blow up everything you want blown up. And you’d have to fuel it with a layline or a bijuu or something, or it won’t get enough nature chakra for an explosion that big.”

If Tobirama gets to sleep tonight, he will be having nightmares about this, he decides. Is this what his brother feels when Tobirama talks?

“They’re mostly good for fights and traps. And controlled demolition work, I guess,” Kako concludes, satisfied, and all Tobirama can do is nod weakly.

A bijuu to fuel an explosive seal...what an idea. Fervently, Tobirama hopes that Kako won’t ever turn her sights on the Senju clan. How would they defend from something like that, even with motukun? What if she attacked while Hashirama was away?

And if she said she wouldn’t use her “Touch Blast” seal to destroy cities, did that mean she had something more suited for the task in her arsenal?

He shudders.

But — what a rush, too. Talking to another seal master is always exciting. Tobirama is almost tempted to bring up some of his own creations, like the Hiraishin, just to see what she would say about it. But he can’t, not if any knowledge he betrays might give her another weapon to turn against his clan in the future. He’s already walking a thin line, talking to her at all.

It is a long time before he can tear his gaze away from the notes. The sun has stopped shining through the gaps of foliage, and the trees are throwing long shadows in the dimming light. Kako doesn’t interrupt him even once after their conversation ends, seemingly content to work right next to where he has managed to seat himself at the table. At some point she had lit the fireplace she’d dug out before, and the flickering is making it harder and harder to make out her calculations. Only one table edge separates them now and if she reached out, she could easily touch him. Any graze of her hand could spell his death, if she could react fast enough. But if he reached her first, quickly enough, brutally enough… He hadn’t realized how close he had come while distracted by the seals. How close she had let him.

Is this the brash arrogance of youth or the earned confidence of someone who  _ knows _ she can take him down if he makes trouble?

He contemplates trying his luck. He could go for her throat with his teeth, but he isn’t sure if he can be fast enough without chakra, strong enough to break instinctively chakra-reinforced skin. She’d survived his tanto; there is no telling what else she’d survive.

She let him come  _ so close _ .

“Why are you working with the Uchiha Clan?” he asks instead of attempting murder. Initiating a conversation again is… risky, but he had been itching with curiosity about the circumstances of his capture and, well, the last time he had  _ expressed _ that curiosity here, he’d gotten to see Kako’s sealing notes and an  _ explanation _ . She is a fellow scientist, after all, so maybe asking one more question wouldn’t even get him hurt.

Kako looks up from her work to face him as her brush vanishes into what must be a seal on her hand, on her  _ skin _ , blinking in confusion.

“I don’t work for the Uchiha? I just gave them a hand this one time, rescuing a child,” Kako explains after a pause. “From a Senju squad,” she adds, an accusatory tone in her voice.

She sounds so sincere, too. Maybe she isn’t a terrible liar after all? Tobirama wishes he could sense chakra in his state. He could verify whether she was lying. Like this, he had to rely on body language cues, which was like trying to run with his chakra bound. As in all things, he had been too reliant on his chakra for too long so that without it, he is rendered useless.

On the other hand, rescuing random Uchiha kids does kind of count as working with the Uchiha. And it is a very unlikely situation for anyone to willingly stumble into. These woods are no place for philanthropy.

“Child-killing squads haven’t been authorized in years,” he points out mildly. Not since Butsuma had died. Hashirama had made sure of it when laying out the new laws, and Tobirama had discreetly taken care of anyone who couldn’t let their old habits die instead.

“Well,” Kako quips, “then you’ll never believe what your ninja get up to in their spare time.”

Tobirama moves on. He has no way of knowing whether Kako spoke the truth, but if by some miracle he ever got back to his clan, he’d investigate thoroughly. 

Honestly, he’d thought he set a very convincing example years ago. Maybe he should remind the clan of the new policies again. If he ever got the opportunity.

“What of Izuna? Has he recovered?” 

_ He had, from what Tobirama had sensed, even beyond what he’d expected.  _

“Right, that was the man we found lying in the forest.”

_ How the hell did the Uchiha treat their wounded? _

“You healed him?” Tobirama presses. It is downright audacious how many questions he is now asking with barely any fear, but he has to know.

Kako nods lightly. 

“The Uchiha Clan has really bad medics, by the way.” She frowns. “They didn’t even set his ribs right.”

Okay, that answers that. Tobirama frowns. That is... deeply troubling information. In the Senju Clan, the odds of Izuna’s recovery would have been about 30 percent, even more if Madara had taken Hashirama up on his offer to heal him personally. Not that he would have, with his trust issues and suicidal pride. Tobirama could have told Hashirama that, if anyone ever listened to him.

They had never questioned whether the Uchiha had similar medical capabilities. And wasn’t that a revelation.

“My brother would be distraught to hear that. He opts to injure, rather than kill, most times.” 

No wonder the Uchiha eschewed Hashirama’s peace offers if he kept crippling their shinobi or subjecting them to painful drawn-out deaths in his attempts to be merciful. And now Tobirama couldn’t even warn him about that terrible miscommunication. He’d be too dead. 

Kako hums in thought. “He didn’t know, but I suppose that won’t make a difference to the bereaved. Seeing your loved ones in pain causes a special kind of hatred.”

Kako scowls with the words, unconsciously touching her arm for a second before she manages to school her features into neutrality. Not for the first time, Tobirama wonders who she is. Where she had come from. If she still had any loved ones left. 

People with someone to come home to seldom charged him straight on. Then again, they seldom survived him no matter what they did.

“Yes," Tobirama agrees. Seeing loved ones in pain is terrible.  _ Hashirama had cried as his dream crumbled with Izuna's death _ . "The Uchiha will see Hashirama's ignorance as neglect, if he ever manages to explain it to them. They will not forgive it easily.”

Not that he would realize the pain he is unintentionally causing, with nobody to tell him. He probably won’t figure it out until years down the line. His foolish big brother. 

Tobirama looks up, towards the sky. The sun is starting to set, painting the edges of the clouds a vibrant orange.

“Do you think your clans will ever stop fighting, Tobirama?” Kako asks quietly, looking at him.

This is dangerous territory. Any conversation with Hashirama had taught him that disagreement on the question of peace could get… heated.

It is a testament to just how dangerously comfortable he’s grown with his captor already, that he takes time to truly consider the question, actually searches for his own true feelings on the matter instead of going with the more sensible options, which are to either go back to silence or tell Kako whatever she wants to hear.

Not that he had any clue what that would be. If this is a test, he will probably fail.

Hashirama had asked him the same question, once, and he had said no, even though he had known what Hashirama had wanted to hear. Back then, Butsuma’s word might as well have been the will of the gods and he would have denied a peace treaty with his last breaths. Had, in fact, used them to curse the Uchiha. Tobirama had been there. It had been very awkward.

These days, when Hashirama asked, it seemed mostly rhetorical. 

When he’d thought Izuna was dead, Tobirama had thought that maybe they could use the shift in balance to  _ force _ the Uchiha to surrender. To make peace. Not the way his brother had wanted, with Uchiha Madara an equal by his side, but it would have been enough. It had always been Tobirama’s job to puzzle out a compromise between Hashirama’s dreams and reality, after all.

But with Izuna back amongst the living? 

The Uchiha are dangerous foes. They had killed two of his brothers and a whole lot more of his extended family. They were as unforgiving of those who had wronged them as the Senju were, maybe more. Tobirama can’t see any of the clans ever agreeing to just stop. 

What would they even do with their time, without the war?

Not all Uchiha are evil or rotten to the core, whatever the Senju at large may believe. They believed unfounded things about him, too, after all. The Uchiha are just as human as anyone. That doesn’t mean he won’t kill as many as it took to keep his clan from perishing.

Chasing after revenge can only end with more misery, and so he refrains from falling into that mindset when he fights. Itama and Kawarama’s legacy deserves to be more than blood and violence. And yet he doesn’t know if he could ever look at an Uchiha and not think about the painful flare of his Itama’s chakra at the edge of his senses, just before it was snuffed out.

Tobirama weighs his answer. 

“Maybe.” He settles on. “I cannot imagine it, but maybe. Maybe our children will overcome their hatred, or maybe one of the clans will give up and move away once and for all. Nothing goes on forever.”

Kako smiles, softly, at him. “Maybe it’ll happen within your lifetime. You never know.”

Unlikely, unless Kako decides to keep him around for an unsustainably long time. He is not in the habit of fooling himself with unfounded optimism. She will get rid of him within the week, once it becomes clear that he would be of no use to her.

“What would peace even look like?” Tobirama asks, mostly to himself. What an odd conversation to have with the woman who will kill him. He smiles.

“You’d get to decide that, I imagine. What you want peace to be.”

“I don’t know,” he says, honestly. He isn’t his brother, who can see the future he wants as clearly as the presence. He just wants his family to stop dying.

Then again, if Hashirama ever got his village, he would probably get stuck doing all the planning and negotiating and keeping the different clans from killing each other. A lifetime writing taxation laws.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Kako smiles at him again. “Well, you should think about it. It’s good to have clear goals in mind.” 

Sometimes, he thinks, Kako seems to forget that she is going to kill him. But the conversation had been nice so far, so he is certainly not going to remind her.

Instead he tries to think of things that he, Tobirama, would want the future to hold, if there were a future for him beyond a shallow grave or a marked storage scroll, and watches Kako unseal her brush again to put the last words on her document. She carefully blows the ink dry before shutting her book of sealing notes.

Then, she blinks towards the sky.

It had gotten dark, the sun setting behind the trees. He had barely noticed the time go by, too busy staring at the notes at first, and then his attention had been completely captured by the idea of peace and by Kako.

She looks just like Touka, ten years ago. It shouldn’t hurt.

It is a terrible weakness that Tobirama cannot extinguish the fantasy he had earlier, of Kako coming back with him to the Senju clan and working on seals with him. It would be nice to have someone to talk to. 

Maybe a peaceful future would include a way for her to let him live even after seeing her notes, without fear of him hunting her down and killing her afterwards, or using her creations against her. The opportunity to share and access knowledge more freely, not just grudgingly between the closest allies. 

Innovation and collaboration without the constant paranoia. Science uninhibited by warfare.

There was so much that they could create if they weren't so caught up in killing each other. So much they could discover. 

Maybe he is getting sentimental. Already mourning his own squandered life. How sad.

“Huh, that’s weird, there’s an Uchiha squad in the area,” Kako notes. “We should probably go.”

That is a very concerning thing to say, but Kako doesn’t seem overly disturbed. “It’s odd that they’re out so late,” she muses. Somehow, Tobirama can’t quite find it in himself to panic, either. Maybe it’s because he is already captured and doomed. Maybe it’s because he has spent so many hours afraid already, his body just can’t maintain the fear.

Kako is skilled, has claimed to be unaffiliated with the Uchiha and probably won’t want to explain to them what she is doing with one of their worst enemies, especially when said enemy is distinctly alive and as of yet un-tortured. She probably won’t let him fall into Uchiha hands.

Quickly gathering her papers, she taps the desk with a finger — it disappears like she sealed it, with all her scrolls and books still on top of it. But there hadn’t been a scroll or anything she could have put the seal on, so it must be in one of her tattoos. Like her brush, earlier. So convenient, like she is flaunting her deadliness. She could probably seal enemies like that, too, if their chakra system didn’t interfere.

Just poke at them, and gone they are.

Maybe that’s what would happen to him, too.

Ridiculous that she had denied being a seal master and thought he’d believe her for even a second. Tobirama feels his natural curiosity flaring to life. If only he could get a quick look at that seal.

Standing up, Kako rolls her shoulders in a stretch. She grumbles.

“I guess I’d best find another place for the night,” she says. “So troublesome.” One hand, the one she’d sealed the desk into, comes up to her mouth to hide a yawn. Tobirama relates. Sitting around all day has made him tired, too, and he has felt the same way about the Uchiha many times.

At a relaxed pace she replaces the square of grass she’d cut out for the fireplace, gathers up the mat Tobirama had slept on and erases all traces of their presence from the small clearing as Tobirama watches. 

Then she turns to him again. Maybe it is finally time. She’d be faster at evading the approaching Uchiha if she sealed his corpse, after all, instead of lugging his live body around.

The day had been nice, all things considered. No hunger, no responsibilities, no pouting Hashirama. Their conversation about peace had been a bit unsettling, but he’d found out more about his mysterious captor and it hadn’t left him feeling frustrated and empty the way Hashirama’s monologues on the topic sometimes did. Kako’s seals had been terrifying, and nightmare-inspiring, but they had also been awesome. Their talk had inspired several new sealing ideas, and Tobirama always enjoyed the thought of creation, even if the invention would only ever live in his mind.

Somewhere far away, a crow caws and is answered by a friend.

He would have liked to talk some more, maybe. Look at that storage seal. Watch the next day’s sunset through the leaves.

He would have liked to have said a proper goodbye to the people he loved. 

“I’m sorry, I’m going to knock you out again,” Kako says with a grimace and then she is upon him before he can even flinch back. 

In the second before his world turns black, Tobirama quietly hopes he’ll get to wake up again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All they do is hang out. This will set the tone for a lot of what is to come.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Conversation Overheard by a Captive Faking Unconsciousness](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21684820) by [SlowMercury](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlowMercury/pseuds/SlowMercury)




End file.
